Steve Strang, who heads the Pentecostal media company Charisma, is promoting “Trump Aftershock,” his latest paean to the glories of Donald Trump. It’s a follow-up to “God and Donald Trump,” which depicted Trump’s election as a miracle, citing the many visions and prophesies that charismatic Christians had about God using Trump to save America.
“Trump Aftershock” will be out on Election Day, November 6, but the promotional campaign for the book is well underway. Strang’s public relations firm says the book “will uncover the unreported facts while objectively helping readers understand what the nation’s most unlikely and unconventional president has accomplished, including 500 accomplishments in the first 500 days of the Trump presidency.”
Strang is also using his section of Charisma’s website to promote the book. In an August 23 post, he tells readers that the book “is no puff piece.” But if the introduction and first three chapters are any indication—they’re available now to readers who pre-order the book—the tome goes well beyond puffery in its portrayal of Trump as God’s instrument, doing battle against the evil forces of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros—as well as “fake news” from the secular media, swamp-dwellers, and deep state.
Indeed, the available sections suggest that the book will be an unabashed love letter to Trump. “I believe Donald Trump was raised up by God at this pivotal time in our history,” Strang writes. “There were political expressions of the changing mood of the country. But I believe spiritually something was happening. Christians were praying for things to change, and the New York real estate tycoon was actually an answer to prayer.”
Strang writes that he wants to “help readers to better understand the political, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the election that brought us such a complex, unpredictable, and conspicuously gifted leader.” Later, he writes, “By the end of his first year in office, he had amassed one of the most impressive lists of accomplishments of any president in history and made it clear he was barely started.” Strang continues:
I’m convinced God is using Donald Trump in a remarkable and unprecedented way, not unlike the way he used Winston Churchill and even American general George Patton when it looked as if the Nazis would control all of Europe and the world was hanging in the balance. As I’ve researched and written this book, I’ve had the feeling on many occasions that I’m recording the history of one of the most extraordinary times in the life of our nation. …
Donald Trump is confrontational by nature. He is a gifted negotiator and a shrewd business executive who always expects to win. But as Debra J. Saunders observes, a lot of people believe this atmosphere of conflict and chaos is no accident: it’s actually part of a deliberate strategy. Trump is a man who thrives on chaos and loves the excitement of the mano a mano confrontation. As former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer once remarked, “I think he doesn’t back down from a fight.” …
If Donald Trump had done nothing more than stop Hillary Clinton who is, in my opinion, the most corrupt candidate to ever run for president, he would have been successful to me. But when he said he wanted to make America great again, it was not just a slogan but a vision that propelled this president to accomplish more than any of us could have imagined. Looking at the success of the president’s policies during the first two years of his administration, it’s hard not to be impressed. Just the items enumerated in this chapter make an impressive list of accomplishments. In every list compiled by the media tracking the success or failure of Trump’s campaign promises, he’s batting way over five hundred. Whether looking at his first day, first month, first hundred days, or even his first year in office, President Trump has been able to marshal the support needed to accomplish almost all his goals. This is remarkable when you consider that he has been fighting an ongoing battle with the media and holding firm against a recalcitrant Congress.
Strang’s new book is just a small part of the relentless pro-Trump propagandizing from Religious Right leaders and Christian media, which helps explain why white evangelicals are so unwavering in their support for Trump. And it also helps explain why so many Americans believe Trump’s rants and online conspiracy theories about Trump’s political opponents, who are described as “demented” and “deranged.” Strang is all-in with the idea that the deep state is conspiring against Trump. From his upcoming book:
It seems the biggest surprise in this developing story was that during the campaign the administration of the outgoing president, aided by the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and a network of spies and undercover operatives, conducted a search-and-destroy mission against the Trump campaign. Over several months these men and women laid an elaborate trap so that in the unlikely event Trump should somehow snatch the victory from the waiting arms of Hillary Clinton, he wouldn’t last long enough to do much damage. The fact that this deep-state coup d’état has largely failed and the president has successfully defended his administration is almost as big a miracle as the election itself. …
President Trump won the presidency fair and square, earning the votes of more than sixty million Americans, [the Washington Times’ Charles] Hurt points out, winning the electoral votes of the thirty states he needed to take the White House. But at the height of the campaign, it appears the administration of the outgoing president empowered a massive network of spies, subversives, and saboteurs with orders to conduct clandestine operations against candidates of the other party. So they spied, compromised, and exposed whatever they could find, and laid an elaborate trap just in case the American people should actually elect Donald Trump as their next president. In that light Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s endless investigation in search of a crime that never happened should come as no surprise, Hurt writes. “It was cooked up long before Mr. Trump even won the election,” and it continues like the world’s longest case of water torture. But this is apparently “the new standard for ‘self-governance’ in America.” The people can elect anyone they want, but the muckrakers, debunkers, and character assassins will do everything in their power, including inventing bizarre scenarios of international intrigue, to hound the other team from office. So far the effort has been effective, gumming up the works, but these people, says Hurt, have no idea how much the voters and taxpayers actually despise them.
During the presidential campaign, Strang and Charisma had energetically promoted the idea that Trump had been anointed by God. (Sample headline, from a post by Jennifer LeClaire from August 2016: “Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?”) After the election, Strang declared that Trump had been touched by God and that his election was an “absolute miracle.”
Strang is telling Charisma readers now that if thousands of them pre-order his book and help propel it onto best-seller lists, it will help Strang “spread the word that living in the power of the Holy Spirit not only is the way to live a life pleasing to God but also empowers us to defeat the demonic strongholds in our culture and to bring the kingdom of God to earth, as Jesus told us to do.”
